On my
crawl count this morning I was about 15 minutes away from finding a turtle! We
leave at 4:00 when it is still dark, so that we patrol during the last hour that turtles will come out to nest. As I was walking, I noticed
flashlights ahead of me. After about 5 minutes, I saw an ATV zoom past
me with its lights off. After about another 10 minutes, I came upon fresh
turtle tracks and an empty nest. If only I left 20-30 minutes earlier! Oh well.
As I was heading back around 5:10, the sunrise was beautiful! I don’t think
I’ve seen a prettier one anywhere else. The sky and ocean were bathed in a warm
pinkish-peach color and the clouds were orangish wisps that stretched across
the sky. I had to stop for a moment to take it all in. I wish I had brought my
camera, but I don’t think it would’ve captured the scene accurately anyways.
After
the crawl count and some breakfast, we continued to dig and break up concrete
in the extra cage. We finished digging and broke up most of the concrete. All
that is left now is to level the sand back again and hopefully it will be ready
for iguana eggs! Fingers crossed Mariachi agrees!
Around
3:00 today, the volunteer that had been giving me trouble earlier left. I
ended up being able to resolve the problems he was having with the project, but
to be honest him leaving relieved a lot of stress. He was an extremely
hard worker, but he had problems getting along
with some of the other volunteers. Not every volunteer is perfect! However, on their departure, the man gave me a hug and called me a tough girl. I think coming from
him that it is pretty high praise. I obviously made some kind of impression on
him.
Once we
finished, we all headed to the ocean to cool off. The past couple days when we
have gone in the ocean, Willi, the local boy who was recently hired by CONAP
(Guatemalan environmental agency) to help Mariachi upkeep the parque, has come
as well. At first, he was very reluctant to talk to us, but slowly we have
gotten him to come out of his shell. He has also started to eat lunch with us instead of going off to eat by himself. We enjoy teaching him English and he enjoys
teaching us Spanish. He is very smart and surprisingly artistic. He is super
nice and I’m glad that we have all gotten to know him better. You can tell that
he enjoys hanging out with people his own age for a change.
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